Biden Hopes to Parlay Lebanon Cease-Fire Into a Broader Regional Peace

by · NY Times

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Biden Hopes to Parlay Lebanon Cease-Fire Into a Broader Regional Peace

With a deal to end more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the president turns his attention back to stopping the war in Gaza before leaving office.

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President Biden praised the truce, which would stop the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
CreditCredit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

By Peter Baker

Reporting from Washington

Finally, President Biden got his Rose Garden peace deal. It was not exactly the one he has been straining to land for most of the past year, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless — and, coming after a bitter election, a sweet moment of validation.

The question is whether the cease-fire in Lebanon that Mr. Biden announced on Tuesday will be the coda to his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East or a steppingstone to more sweeping agreements that could at last end the devastating war in Gaza and potentially even set the stage for a broader regional transformation.

If it holds, the Lebanon cease-fire by itself could make an important difference. It was designed to restore stability along the border between Israel and Lebanon, permitting hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians on both sides to return to their homes while providing a buffer zone to ensure Israeli security and offering an opportunity for Lebanon’s government to reassert control over its territory from a weakened Hezbollah.

But as he stepped out of the Oval Office into the Rose Garden on a sunny November day in the winter of his presidency to hail the agreement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden clearly had grander ambitions still in mind. “It reminds us that peace is possible,” he said. “I say that again: Peace is possible. As long as that is the case, I’ll not for a single moment stop working to achieve it.”

With just 55 days left in office, Mr. Biden is racing against the clock of history. He would prefer to be remembered as the president who set the Middle East on a path toward a lasting settlement of longstanding animosities than one who turned over a mess to his successor.

With the Lebanon accord in hand, Mr. Biden said he would now renew his push for a cease-fire in Gaza, working along with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, and he called on both Israel and Hamas to seize the moment. He described the cataclysmic violence that Palestinians have endured in Gaza in more visceral terms than he typically has over the past 14 months of war.

“They, too, deserve an end to the fighting and displacement,” Mr. Biden said. “The people of Gaza have been through hell. Their world has been absolutely shattered. Far too many civilians in Gaza have suffered far too much.”

Mr. Biden laid most of the blame for the continuing fighting in Gaza with Hamas, which “has refused for months and months to negotiate a good-faith cease-fire and a hostage deal,” he said. But he also called on Israel, which “has been bold on the battlefield,” to now “be bold in turning tactical gains against Iran and its proxies into a coherent strategy.”

An end to the fighting in Gaza accompanied by the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas — including seven Americans, four of whom are believed to still be alive — would be a gratifying final accomplishment for Mr. Biden and his team. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has made it his highest priority for the final weeks of his tenure. Mr. Biden’s advisers Jake Sullivan, Jon Finer, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, along with the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, have all devoted much of the past year to the project.

At so many points along the way they thought they were on the cusp of a deal, only to have something blow it up — a new burst of violence, the targeted assassination of Hamas leaders, the killing of Israeli hostages. Yet they kept going back again and again, never giving up, perhaps naïve in the view of some, but certainly determined and relentless.

After so many close calls, it is hard to imagine that they could pull it off in the time they have left, especially if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel concludes that he would be better off waiting for President-elect Donald J. Trump to take office on Jan. 20. But Mr. Biden’s team insisted again on Tuesday that it was possible.

More elusive, yet endlessly attractive, for Mr. Biden is the broader realignment of the region represented by a long-sought agreement with Saudi Arabia that was derailed by Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war. Even now, at this late hour, Mr. Biden said he might be able to nail down a deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia by providing American security commitments and civilian nuclear assistance to the kingdom and creating a credible pathway to a Palestinian state.

“I believe this agenda remains possible,” Mr. Biden said. “In my remaining time in office, I’ll work tirelessly to advance this vision for an integrated, secure and prosperous region, all of which strengthens America’s national security.” The chances seem remote, but if nothing else, he hopes he can set the table for the next administration to complete such a deal.

Administration officials said they were staying in touch with Mr. Trump’s team about their efforts. Mr. Hochstein briefed the president-elect’s national security advisers shortly after the Nov. 5 election and again in the past two days about the approach and came away feeling that the incoming team was supportive, according to a senior administration official who discussed the sensitive contacts on the condition of anonymity.

The official said that “the political and geopolitical stars both are aligned” for the Saudi deal, which would build on the normalization agreements that Mr. Trump helped seal between Israel and several smaller Arab nations during his first term. Mr. Trump has a close relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who has made clear he is eager for a deal if one can be reached.

In the meantime, the Biden team has work to do to ensure the success of the agreement it has now negotiated in Lebanon, which could easily unravel given the fraught history of the benighted Arab state. Under the agreement, fighting was to halt at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday, and over the next 60 days Hezbollah and Israeli forces are to make phased withdrawals from southern Lebanon while the Lebanese Army moves in to ensure the peace.

“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Mr. Biden said. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again.”

Mr. Biden said that the United States and France would work to ensure that the agreement was successfully enacted, but he repeated that no American combat troops would be involved in the effort. “We’re determined this conflict will not be just another cycle of violence,” he said.

That cycle has been hard to break. Among other things, the latest deal’s negotiators said that Israel would retain the right to respond to any new attacks by Hezbollah, raising the question of whether the cease-fire would really hold. Hezbollah is technically not a party to the agreement, but the Lebanese government ostensibly negotiated on its behalf.

The Biden team was mindful of the unsatisfying end to the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, when the international community brokered a cease-fire, only to essentially move on to other issues even as Hezbollah never really gave up its hold on the south. Mr. Biden’s aides said they had learned the lessons of 2006 and sought to craft this agreement to avoid the same pitfalls.

A “tripartite mechanism” created shortly after the 2006 war will be reformulated and enhanced to include France and to be led by the United States. The group will receive complaints about potential violations and work with the Lebanese Army to build its capacity to ensure security in the southern part of the country. A recently revived military technical committee will include other countries that can provide equipment, training and financial support for Lebanon’s security forces.

Mr. Biden in his televised speech on Tuesday made a point of guaranteeing that no American combat forces would be involved in securing the border. But officials separately said that noncombat American troops working out of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut could be involved in providing training and other support.

Those, of course, were important details, but they were details, best left to aides to describe. For a lame-duck president increasingly fading into the backdrop, the bigger picture loomed. Yes, his time at the top is coming to an end. Yes, his successor is now setting the tone. But for now, the Oval Office is still his. The final legacy is yet to be written.

It was almost possible to hear Mr. Biden trying to write it in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. “Today’s announcement,” he said, “brings us closer to realizing the affirmative agenda that I’ve been pushing forward during my entire presidency, a vision for the future of the Middle East where it’s at peace and prosperous and integrated across borders.”

Closer, perhaps. But not there, at least not yet.

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